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Build a Sales and Marketing Super Team in 4 Steps [Video]

We know, we know — it’s the end of the year, and sometimes all you want to do is watch a minute-long YouTube video instead of reading an entire blog post (and I’m not even going to bring up long-form content like eBooks).

Thank goodness the UK team at Salesforce is on the same wavelength, and has released a quirky new video to address the issues that many modern-day marketing and sales organizations face. If your pipeline is being negatively impacted by a poor sales and marketing workflow, take a look at the video below for a few ideas to start patching things up — and enjoy a few Briticisms along the way.

The main takeaway from the video? Putting your two teams on the same page isn’t about lunch dates, singalongs, and dress-alike Tuesdays (though I kind of wish it were…) — it’s about getting sales and marketing together, aligning objectives, and using the right tools to track what matters. Let’s take a quick look at each of these in turn.

Agree on an ideal prospect.

Much of the breakdown in the sales and marketing workflow occurs during the lead handoff process. Either too many leads are being passed to sales, not enough leads are being passed to sales, lead quality is suspect, or leads from marketing are dismissed by sales altogether. Fixing this broken process starts by getting your teams together and defining your ideal prospect. Listen to the qualities that sales is looking for in their leads, and make sure that marketing has a solid understanding of the types of leads that sales wants.

Decide when a lead is sales-ready.

Once you have that definition in place, it’s important to understand when a lead should be passed to sales. Having a defined process will help minimize the amount of time sales has to waste with unnecessary follow-ups. Are there certain actions that indicate sales-readiness? Is the lead showing buying signals? Talk to your sales team to see which actions signal that a lead should immediately be passed over for follow-up.

Put it in action with marketing automation.

You can implement the two steps above using a marketing automation tool’s ability to score and grade leads. To determine whether or not a lead is sales-ready, look at their lead grade (determined based on the criteria you agree upon with your sales team). Then, use their lead score (based on their activity levels) to determine sales-readiness. A combination of a high lead score and good grade indicates that a lead is ready to be passed over to the sales team.

Measure results.

One of the most important parts of revising your sales and marketing workflow is making sure that it’s working. Is sales happy with the quality of leads that are being passed to them? Are there any areas where leads are getting stuck in the funnel? While the first question can be answered with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ from a sales rep, the second question requires a tool like marketing automation to measure the health of your sales funnel. Keep an eye on the number of prospects in each stage of your funnel, how long they’re staying there, opportunities created, and pipeline generated in order to really gauge the impact of your efforts.

I know what I said earlier about long-form content, but if you’d like to learn more about any of the topics covered in this video, or about sales and marketing alignment in general, take a look at our eBook on the subject by clicking on the banner below.